India Plans to Generate 200GW of Solar Electricity by 2050

The Indian newsletter “The Hindu” announced that there is a project of the government from New Delhi for a massive expansion of solar energy systems. These will generate 200,000 megawatts by 2050.

The government project foresees the installation of small-scale photovoltaic panels, commercial-scale solar plants and solar lighting systems, in order to encourage domestic solar manufacturing. The efforts would occur in both rural and urban areas and target residential as well as commercial users.

The India’s installed solar capacity currently at only 3 megawatts, this would be the most ambitious solar plan that any country has laid out so far. The scope of the initiative would also match and ultimately far exceed India’s plans for nuclear power generation.

Until 2020, the plan aims to have 20,000 megawatts of solar power expanding to 100,000 MW by 2030 and 200,000 by 2050. The funding if this project will be the most difficult, because the estimates made by Greenpeace shows that, by 2050 India could generate 69% of its electricity and 70% of its cooling and heating needs from renewable sources, but that will require an investment of $154 billion.